Compositional Model Repositories via Dynamic Constraint Satisfaction with Order-of-Magnitude Preferences

The predominant knowledge-based approach to automated model construction, compositional modelling, employs a set of models of particular functional components. Its inference mechanism takes a scenario describing the constituent interacting components of a system and translates it into a useful mathematical model. This paper presents a novel compositional modelling approach aimed at building model repositories. It furthers the field in two respects. Firstly, it expands the application domain of compositional modelling to systems that can not be easily described in terms of interacting functional components, such as ecological systems. Secondly, it enables the incorporation of user preferences into the model selection process. These features are achieved by casting the compositional modelling problem as an activity-based dynamic preference constraint satisfaction problem, where the dynamic constraints describe the restrictions imposed over the composition of partial models and the preferences correspond to those of the user of the automated modeller. In addition, the preference levels are represented through the use of symbolic values that differ in orders of magnitude

Introducing new constructs for data modelling and column generation in LP modelling languages

Through popular implementation of structured query language (SQL) and query-by-example(QBE) relational databases have become the de-facto industry standard for data modelling.We consider the indices, sets, and the declarative form of Linear Programming (LP) modelling languages and introduce new constructs which provide direct link to the database systems. The models constructed in this way are data driven and display a dynamicstructure. We then show how this approach can be naturally extended to include column generation features stated in procedural forms within an otherwise declarative modelling paradigm

Data modelling for emergency response

Emergency response is one of the most demanding phases in disaster management. The fire brigade, paramedics, police and municipality are the organisations involved in the first response to the incident. They coordinate their work based on welldefined policies and procedures, but they also need the most complete and up-todate information about the incident, which would allow a reliable decision-making.\ud There is a variety of systems answering the needs of different emergency responders, but they have many drawbacks: the systems are developed for a specific sector; it is difficult to exchange information between systems; the systems offer too much or little information, etc. Several systems have been developed to share information during emergencies but usually they maintain the nformation that is coming from field operations in an unstructured way.\ud This report presents a data model for organisation of dynamic data (operational and situational data) for emergency response. The model is developed within the RGI-239 project ‘Geographical Data Infrastructure for Disaster Management’ (GDI4DM)

The inheritance of dynamic and deontic integrity constraints or: Does the boss have more rights?

In [18,23], we presented a language for the specification of static, dynamic and deontic integrity constraints (IC's) for conceptual models (CM's). An important problem not discussed in that paper is how IC's are inherited in a taxonomic network of types. For example, if students are permitted to perform certain actions under certain preconditions, must we repeat these preconditions when specializing this action for the subtype of graduate students, or are they inherited, and if so, how? For static constraints, this problem is relatively trivial, but for dynamic and deontic constraints, it will turn out that it contains numerous pitfalls, caused by the fact that common sense supplies presuppositions about the structure of IC inheritance that are not warranted by logic. In this paper, we unravel some of these presuppositions and show how to avoid the pitfalls. We first formulate a number of general theorems about the inheritance of necessary and/or sufficient conditions and show that for upward inheritance, a closure assumption is needed. We apply this to dynamic and deontic IC's, where conditions arepreconditions of actions, and show that our common sense is sometimes mistaken about the logical implications of what we have specified. We also show the connection of necessary and sufficient preconditions of actions with the specification of weakest preconditions in programming logic. Finally, we argue that information analysts usually assume constraint completion in the specification of (pre)conditions analogous to predicate completion in Prolog and circumscription in non-monotonic logic. The results are illustrated with numerous examples and compared with other approaches in the literature

Robust Processing of Natural Language

Previous approaches to robustness in natural language processing usually treat deviant input by relaxing grammatical constraints whenever a successful analysis cannot be provided by ``normal'' means. This schema implies, that error detection always comes prior to error handling, a behaviour which hardly can compete with its human model, where many erroneous situations are treated without even noticing them. The paper analyses the necessary preconditions for achieving a higher degree of robustness in natural language processing and suggests a quite different approach based on a procedure for structural disambiguation. It not only offers the possibility to cope with robustness issues in a more natural way but eventually might be suited to accommodate quite different aspects of robust behaviour within a single framework.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX, uses pstricks.sty, pstricks.tex, pstricks.pro, pst-node.sty, pst-node.tex, pst-node.pro. To appear in: Proc. KI-95, 19th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Bielefeld (Germany), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer 199

Alternative Theories on Economic Growth and the Co-evolution of Macro-Dynamics and Technological Change: A survey.

This paper aims to propose an approach to endogeneous growth considering the relationship between macro-dynamics and technical change. We draw upon two stream of literature: Cumulative causation and its macroscopic view of economic dynamics, and Evo-lutionary economics and its focus on micro-determinants of technical change. This paper presents a survey of the formal representation of the growth process and identifies the possible bridges between these two approaches. Our claim is that merging these two distinct theories might offer a framework to consider the co-evolution of macro-dynamics and technical change.Economic Growth, Technical Change, Cumulative Causation, Evolutionary Theory.

A Graph Grammar for Modelling RNA Folding

We propose a new approach for modelling the process of RNA folding as a graph transformation guided by the global value of free energy. Since the folding process evolves towards a configuration in which the free energy is minimal, the global behaviour resembles the one of a self-adaptive system. Each RNA configuration is a graph and the evolution of configurations is constrained by precise rules that can be described by a graph grammar.Comment: In Proceedings GaM 2016, arXiv:1612.0105